The sanctuary of the Flushing Free Synagogue, which is National Register of Historic Places
FROM THE CHIEF LONG COVID OFFICER ON THE 1,668TH DAY OF THE PANDEMIC
Long Covid Art Project, Evacuation of the Disabled, Happy New Year
This week’s issue is being published on Sunday, Day 1,670 of the pandemic, because Thursday night was the start of Rosh Hashanah, Rosch ha-Schana in my first language, and I do suddenly become more observant on major holidays where it is believed that the Almighty will decide who shall live and who shall die in the coming year. On the Jewish calendar, it marked the start of 5785.
As such, I’d like to wish all readers, regardless of religion, a happy and healthy New Year. Given that the world’s three main faiths are Abrahamic, it’s a universal message to celebrate the start of a new Jewish New Year and the creation of the world, even if you don’t necessarily believe the biblical story of creation.
We received a lot of feedback on the story “The Lessons of Grenfell” concerning the evacuation of disabled people. Given that, with climate change, we really don’t know where a disaster could happen, it’s not even possible to suggest that a person who might have issues with an evacuation move there because there is no there.
In addition, we’ve found in discussion forums and one-on-one conversations that a lot of people with Long Covid have used the expressive arts to document how they feel with the condition. If that’s you, or you want to create and share anything from a drawing to a poem to a photograph to a piece of music to illustrate this feeling, your creativity can help shed light on the challenges and triumphs of those affected by this condition. For more information, go to www.longcovidartproject.com
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In news we cover today, a study suggests that small doses of lithium aspartate may help Long Covid patients, another study reported commonalities between patients with Long Covid-related pulmonary issues and other patients with pulmonary fibrosis, and the state of Utah issued a report that says that one out of 12 Utahns suffers from Long Covid.
LONG COVID
Small doses of lithium may help Long Covid patients, a new study suggests. The study, entitled “Lithium Aspartate for Long Covid Fatigue and Cognitive Dysfunction: A Randomized Clinical” conducted at the University at Buffalo found that low doses of lithium aspartate were ineffective in treating symptoms such as fatigue and brain fog. However, a follow-up dose-finding study provided some evidence suggesting that higher doses may be effective.
The study was led by Dr. Thomas J. Guttuso, Jr., a professor of neurology in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB and a physician with UBMD Neurology, who said in a statement that “[I]t’s a negative study with a positive twist.”
Guttoso said that nine of ten Long Covid patients he treated with lithium aspartate in doses ranging from 5 to 15 mg per day saw “very good benefit” in terms of improvements to their fatigue and brain fog symptoms. But that was not the outcome of the randomized clinical study. However, he then continued with a smaller group of three participants from the original study with doses ranging from 40 to 45 mg and those patients did in fact report declines in brain fog and fatigue.
“This is a very small number of patients, so these findings can only be seen as preliminary,” he said. “Perhaps achieving higher blood levels of lithium may provide improvements to fatigue and brain fog in Long Covid.”
Researchers at Northwestern University who have focused on Long Covid said they had made a discovery that could lead to a potential treatment for thousands of patients who presented with pulmonary issues including persistent coughing after having SARS-CoV-2.
Dr. Marc Sala, a pulmonologist who is the co-director of the Comprehensive Covid Center at Northwestern, said that he and his colleagues found a persistent migration of white blood cells including neutrophils and monocytes into the lungs of people with radiographic abnormalities. He said that it appears that the same biological processes responsible for other types of lung injury that result in pulmonary fibrosis are present in the patients who took part in the study.
“This common denominator explanation may help not only in developing treatments for Long Covid as it continues to evolve in the future, but also contributes to our understanding of pulmonary fibrosis due to other conditions, Sala said in a statement announcing the publication of the study.”
A new study found that 1 in 12 Utahns presently have Long Covid. The report was published the Utah Department of Health and Human Services.
The report gets it right: “It can significantly impact a person’s quality of life and well-being. Diagnosis is challenging because there is no simple test or validated screening tool. Treatment options are limited and do not guarantee resolution of the illness.”
The report included several works of art created by Long Covid patients that reflect how they feel with the condition.
Blake Bockholt, a former teacher and long-distance runner, is now wheelchair-bound and was at the press conference announcing the report’s findings. He told the Utah News Dispatch, which was also present, that “[I]t’s one thing to have an injury, but know that injury will get better. It’s a whole other thing when you don’t have the energy to get out. Everyone else is doing things you wish you could do. You’re stuck in your body; you’re stuck in your mind. It leads to mental health crises.”
UNITED STATES
A preclinical study suggests that a drug-free nasal spray formally referred to as a Pathogen Capture and Neutralizing Spray, or PCANS, could protect the user from a variety of airborne viruses. PCANS, which utilizes a multi-modal approach to enhance efficacy, coats the nasal cavity, capturing large respiratory droplets from the air, and serving as a physical barrier against a broad spectrum of viruses and bacteria, while rapidly neutralizing them with over 99.99% effectiveness.
The developer of PCANS, Akita Biosciences, recently introduced the nasal spray under the brand name Profi. The peer-reviewed study entitled “Toward a Radically Simple Multi-Modal Nasal Spray for Preventing Respiratory Infections,” was published in the journal Advanced Materials.
This report introduces the Pathogen Capture and Neutralizing Spray (PCANS), which utilizes a multi-modal approach to enhance efficacy. PCANS coats the nasal cavity, capturing large respiratory droplets from the air, and serving as a physical barrier against a broad spectrum of viruses and bacteria, while rapidly neutralizing them with over 99.99% effectiveness.
Respiratory virus season has arrived in the nation and it’s time for people to get their coronavirus and influenza inoculations. Because the respiratory virus season tends to peak between December and March, getting vaccinated in October can help provide protection throughout the season.
The owner of a Chicago laboratory company that operated coronavirus testing sites from February 2021 to February 2022 caused claims to be submitted to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resources and Services Administration for coronavirus tests that were not performed as billed. Zishan Alvi, who owned LabElite and now pleaded guilty to multiple charges, caused patients to be offered PCR test results on an expedited basis for an additional fee. As part Alvi’s scheme, the lab released negative test results to patients opting for the expedited service, even though the lab had either not actually tested the specimens or the results were inconclusive.
Alvi, whose first name means “princely” in Arabic, also transferred the fraudulently-obtained funds he received from a LabElite account to a personal account and used the funds to purchase automobiles and invest in stocks and cryptocurrency. He is facing 20 years in federal prison.
GLOBAL
The border closures between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in the first years of the pandemic had a major impact on hospital staff and patients at Altnagelvin Hospital due to its close proximity to the Londonderry border, former medical director of the Western Health Trust, Dr Catherine McDonnell, told the UK Covid Inquiry. She also told the inquiry board that being at the center of two jurisdictions meant that there were different rules and lockdown dates and this led to a spike in Covid-19 cases in the north west.
The Inquiry Board is currently examining the impact of the pandemic on the healthcare systems in each of the United Kingdom’s four nations.
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
Deaths are mounting at California dairy farms as the H5N1 avian flu spreads at a far greater rate than had been anticipated. Dairy operators had been told to expect a mortality rate of less than 2%, but preliminary reports suggest that between 10% and 15% of infected cattle are dying, according to veterinarians and dairy farmers, the Los Angeles Times reported in recent days. State health officials also reported two suspected cases of H5N1 infections among dairy workers in Tulare County, the largest dairy-producing county in the nation.
Hurricane Helene flooded a factory owned by Baxter International in Marion, North Carolina, that is one of the largest suppliers of intravenous fluids in the United States. As a result, some hospitals may receive 40% of what their normal order would be and will have to carefully ration the fluids as well as cut back on elective surgeries in some instances. Baxter said it will spare no expense in bringing the factory back on line but said it does not “have a timeline for when operations will be back up and running.”
The World Health Organization authorized Abbott Laboratories’ monkeypox or mpox diagnostic test for emergency use last week, the first such approval in the agency’s effort to bolster testing capabilities in countries facing outbreaks of the disease.
PANDEMIC STATISTICS
GLOBAL FIGURES AT A GLANCE
The total number of coronavirus cases across the globe as of September 15, 2024 since the start of the pandemic stands at 776,281,230, an increase of 76,090 people in the preceding 7 days, according to data compiled by KFF, a non-partisan health research organization.
The cumulative death toll stands at 7,065,880, an increase of 1,500 deaths in the same period and a week-over-week increase of 386 deaths.
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending September 21, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on September 23 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 11.6%, a decrease of 2.3 percentage points in the most recent week. Meanwhile, as of September 28, 2024, the percentage of emergency room visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 1.1%, a figure that is down 0.6 percentage point from the previous period when it was 1.7%.
As of September 14, 2024, the number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 is now 3.7 per 100,000 members of the population, a figure that is down from 4 in the prior week.
Meanwhile, as of September 24, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 1.9%, a figure that is down 0.1 percentage points since the prior week.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine at press time, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information. So far, 13.58 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and the seven-day-average of the number of daily doses of vaccine administrated was less than 0.01 doses per million members of the population as of August 12, 2024. Please note that the data provided by Our World in Data has not been updated since that date.
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Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this issue.
The Long Covid Monitor is a publication of the Center for Long Covid Research. www.longcov.org
If you have Long Covid and need to talk to someone, call the Long Covid Patient Peer Counseling Phone Line, or HOPELINE. The HOPELINE is our free, confidential support and information service.
☏ 844 LONGCOV (844 566-4268)
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
